How About Some Advice?
by HowAboutThat
Summary: Uh-oh, HAT's visiting the junkyard and spreading her insanity and obsessing over Skimbleshanks. Oh, no! Not another black hole! We just got her out! I hope that the new fanfiction authors use it and everyone enjoys the randomness of me before sugar is put in my system (yes, I didn't have sugar before or during writing this, but afterwards is a different story).


HAT: This was inspired by Pouncii's story, _How to Stop Your CATS Fanfics from Sucking so Hard,_ and, yes, she gave me permission to do it. You should read it, it's hilarious! Also, there's a few other stories based on it by cats1991 and Quiffin that you should read as well! This is a little advice for all of you because, Everlasting, knows that you need this. This also can be applies to stories in another part of fanfiction or in a regular story, too, I suppose. Welp, enjoy!

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, besides, I guess, the plot... and Lyon and that random OC running across- HEY! That's not a bathroom!- *looks at readers with embarrassed/shy smile* um... he's still potty training so... yeah. I'm just gonna let you read now.**

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The Jellicle cats lounge about in the junkyard, their eyes drooping in boredom when suddenly ears prick at a loud crash and two short shouts. A silver tabby covered in black stripes glances up at his father, a large multi-brown patched tom and receives a nod to check it out. Silvery eyes flicker around the junkyard and note two toms are out and about, like they should be and cautiously moves deeper into the junkyard. The rest of the cats sit in anticipation and wait for their Protector to return with the ones that have caused the noise.

The silver tabby returns with an irritated look and his shoulders drooped, causing a few cats to question why. "HAT's visiting again."

"How?" asks a white queen with dark brown eyes, knowing the one visiting lives far away.

"About what?" demands a kit that's mostly white with brown stripes and a brown mark over his right eye, dark blue eyes flashing with curiosity.

"That's it?" a silvery white queen with brown stripes and emerald eyes asks, her mouth quirking in a way that shows she's not effected (A/N: Like how I did that?).

Munkustrap sighs. "On the train with her OC, Lyon, to give some advice or something another, whatever she was yelling at that calico for... and she found Skimble."

A few groans and a few knowing smiles before there's an eruption of laughter as Skimbleshanks stumbles around in an orange blue while a mostly black queen with curly fur, brown on her ear tips, paws, and a swirled design over her bright brown eyes sits on his back, clinging to his waistcoat while behind him runs a black and gray calico with wild blue-gray eyes races after them, his vest waving in the wind.

"Lass, get of of me, please!" the orange tabby begs.

"You didn't say the magic word," the authoress pouts.

"Bacon!" shouts the OC as he gets a grip around her waist and yanks her off.

She lets go and tumbles to the ground with the black and gray tom before getting up and dusting herself off. "Well, that was quite the introduction!"

The Scottish tom gets up and dusts himself off. "My, lass, you've got a surprising grip... What do we owe the pleasure of having you visit us?"

The queen seems confused at first, but her ears perk and her eyes light up. "Oh, yeah! I came here to give some advice!"

"Yes, we know that, but about what?" the leader asks, tail lazily flicking.

"Deuterpillow!" cries the young queen as she runs over and scrambles onto his back and gives him a hug.

Deuteronomy chuckles. "Hello, HAT, but you didn't answer my question."

"Huh?"

"Forgetful queen," mutters a Maine Coon as he rolls his amber eyes. "What advice?"

A nervous chuckle from the forgetful queen. "Oh, that's right. Welp, there's been an influx of new authors and authoresses in our CATS community and, though the rise is good, the fact that many of them aren't well equipped for the CATS fandom let alone for far larger things if they have goals to be big published authors, is quite depressing. I've decided to give them advice so they're not ill prepared."

"Okay, like what?" Lyon asks while tilting his head.

"Well, a lot of them expect to be famous just like that," she informs, snapping her fingers while getting off of the old tom's back and pacing on the tire with a half-frustrated, half-sympathetic look. "It takes time to become well-known, after all, this is a small community compared to the big ones like, say, Twilight, Naruto, or those ridiculously large fandoms, but it's certainly not the smallest, I guarantee you that. A lot of us have lives and won't spend every waking moment on fanfiction (you know, unless it's summer vacation or they're on vacation from work, and even that's a maybe)."

"Yeah, so?" a mostly white tom-kit with black patches and brown stripes as well as one over his right eye asks, emerald eyes dull with boredom. "It's not like there isn't quite a few on here every day reading stories, everyone has different schedules."

A shrug of acceptance. "You got a point, Pounce, but just because of that doesn't mean you're gonna be a friggin' superstar on here. It takes work."

A chuckle from a fat black and white tux. "Humor me, do you think you're famous in the CATS community?"

A bitter laugh from the she-cat. "You're funny. You know I'm not that well-known. In fact, the only reason my name might sound familiar is because I'm posting chapters and stories like a madqueen all the time and end up on the first page."

"So, HAT, what about reviews since you're so keen on getting them like every other author on this site?" demands Tugger as he tries to pry Etcetera off of his leg.

HAT giggles and takes a quick picture of the two before putting it away. "Just because there's not a lot of reviews doesn't mean people don't like it. I mean seriously, even I don't review everything I read, and some others don't either. Don't expect to have a lot of reviews within a few hours of posting it, it takes time. The most reviews I've ever gotten on one story, and this was a long term story so it was from the same people, was 22 on what was originally supposed to be a one-shot that was of a crack-pairing. HGP (HumanGuineaPig) got a lot because some of those stories have been there for a while and because they're really good. There's a lot of practice in making a good story and even the best stories take a few chapters to accumulate a lot of reviews."

"Anything else, oh, wise one?" sarcastically asks the male mystic.

"Shut it, Cori!" snaps the black and brown queen.

Skimble sighs and puts a paw on the queen's shoulder. "Calm down."

"Don't tell a queen that!"

"I'll let you wear my waistcoat for the rest of this story if you keep from snapping anymore," he says, glass-green eyes full of amusement.

She keeps a straight face and observes him for a second. "The rest of the story?" Skimble nods and she holds out her paw. "Hand it over."

He sighs and takes off his waistcoat and helps HAT put it on despite it being too big for her and then takes the silencer out of the belled collar and flicks it. "There."

She squeals, and starts playing with the bell, completely distracted for a second before Skimble catches the bell and puts the silencer back in. The cats all around roll their eyes at the antics of the authoress and wonder why they let her toy with their lives in stories when she's like this. When they think about it, they just don't know, which is quite understandable since they let a lot of authors toy with their lives for multiple different reasons, most likely, and get mixed up on why one is allowed with another.

"You were saying? Get onto how to make a story better!" a brown and black stripped kitten demands, arms crossed over her chest.

"Thanks Electra. Okay, so to keep your readers interested you need to leave strategically placed cliffhangers."

"I hate cliffhangers!" Etcetera complains.

"Well, too bad!" HAT snaps, before earning a glare from Skimble. "Sorry... anyway, a cliffhanger, through irritating beyond belief to any and all readers, especially on incomplete stories, is a very useful tool to make readers come back for more, but often it's not advised to do it in the second chapter after the first if it has a cliffhanger. It'd be better to wait until, perhaps, the fourth or fifth chapter when they're immersed, depending on how short your chapters are. Prologues don't count, they're supposed to be cliffhangers to begin with (for me and a few others, anyway). They know how they react to cliffhangers, and that's why they should put in a few, but don't put them every single chapter, you gotta give them a break once in a while."

"How about that... HAT's actually becoming useful," a black and white patched tom says with a smirk.

"Leave her alone, she's useful," a scarlet queen informs.

"How?" demands her sister.

"Well... uh..."

A pale orange queen covered in tiger stripes and leopard spots rolls her chocolate eyes and decides to stick up for the Jellicle Scribe. "She brings smiles to people's faces and she's given good advice through some of her stories."

"Thank you!" the defended queen says, hugging the Gumbie Cat.

"No problem, sweetheart... you were saying?"

"Oh, yeah! There's this thing about haters. Listen, in anything and everything whether writing or politics or anything, there's no way to please absolutely everyone because if one tries, no one's happy. Just please yourself first and the others will like it too (though not sure if that part's completely true with politics, try majority in that one I suppose) and if there's someone that hates it, that's okay, there's no need to argue unnecessarily or anything like that. So, it's one or a few people, the rest like you so keep pleasing them."

"That's actually some good advice," mutters a brown and black striped tom.

"Thanks, Gus!"

Said tom's reddish brown and black striped son smiles. "I'm sure someone appreciates this story."

"I dunno about that, but if you say so."

"Anything else?" Jellylorum asks.

"Oh, yeah! Some people don't want to go into anymore detail, it seems... I wanna know what's happening around them. Sure, I'm not the best at this, but I try. And people always doing the, "such-and-such said" and then "such-and-such said" gets old. Add "murmur" and "whisper" and other descriptive words when talking, and "sashaying" and "strides" and other stuff for when they move and not just "green," but "emerald" or "jade" or something... also there's the fact that there's no describing surroundings. You don't tell anyone where the furniture is or how the castle looks, granted I don't either, but I'm working on it, slowly, but surely."

"I noticed that," Jenny murmurs.

Skimbleshanks holds out his paw. "It's the end of the story, so give it back."

"N-n-no! I wanna keep it!" the curly furred queen murmurs, her head lowered while her paws cling to the fabric.

"You have more vests, just let her have that one," Deuteronomy groans.

"That's my favorite one!" complains the Railway Cat.

HAT takes off the waistcoat and holds it out. "Here... Besides, I get to see you sometimes anyway."

Skimble grins and gives her a hug. "Maybe you're not that bad... how much sugar did you have before you wrote this?"

"None," she answers, making the cats gasp and Skimble check her breath, pupils, and heartbeat. "What's the big deal? I don't always have sugar... but I'm gonna get a bowl of Blue Bell ice cream after this."

The cats relax and Skimble lets out a sigh. "For a second I thought something was wrong with you."

"Something _is_ wrong with me. Sometimes I have no sugar for the weird/funny things I write," she shrugs before turning to walk away and ends up falling in a black hole.

All the cats and kittens groan and then Pouncival trips into a bucket, causing another chorus of groans.

"Who wants to get HAT?" Munkustrap calls as he sets to work on getting Pouncival out of the bucket with Coricopat. When there's no reply he rolls his eyes. "Seriously? We're gonna get killed if she does... speaking of, is she still alive?"

"_AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!_"

"Yep, she's alive," a Notorious Couple of Cats mutter with their Cockney accents.

"Lyon, get the jaws of life, a balloon bear, a feather, and some lipstick," orders Tugger as he peers into the black hole.

"The last explosion singed my fur off because of those things!" complains the railway cat OC.

"Just do it before there's some angry fans!" snaps the Maine Coon before he looks at the readers. "Review while we get HAT out again."

"We're coming, lass!" calls the Scottish and Irish railway cats before they jump down, dragging Tugger with them.


End file.
